


Book 1: Fall

by AHKyle



Series: Avatar: Legacy of Steel [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-24 17:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22001473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHKyle/pseuds/AHKyle
Summary: Jin Hua Bei Fong struggles to fit in in school. He is bullied, his twin sister thinks he’s a weakling and worst of all, she might be right. Born into a lesser known branch of the sprawling and prominent Bei Fong family, Jin cannot bend a single element, and has difficulty trusting others. Only his mother seems to be able to soothe him, but when a gift of heirloom armor awakens a fearsome power within him, nothing seems to be set in stone.
Series: Avatar: Legacy of Steel [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583743
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. Flowers In The Fall

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter in a projected-to-be 6 chapter Book, entitled Fall. Another Book is possible, but it depends on the response this Book gets (and how I feel at the end of writing this one.) Initially this fanfic was meant to be explored in comic form. Illustrations may accompany individual chapters going forward.

Being a part of a famous bending family leaves much to be desired. No matter how impressive you or your sister might be, no matter how loving your mother and father are, your life in the face of all of the rest of your family’s amazing accomplishments can’t help but feel small, insignificant, like a mote of dust resting on a badgermole’s nose.  


I’ve been told stories about the rest of the Bei Fong clan, the sprawling steel grip they have on the realms of politics, technology, art. Everyone knows about Toph and her children, how they guided Avatar Aang and Avatar Korra through their journey to save the world from some calamity or another. Especially now that there’s an HM2 in every home, it’s hard for the famous to be anything other than household names. So it feels strangely relieving to know that no one knows who you are, even though your cousins are sports stars and your uncle might soon be president of the United Republic. It’s a relief, and also a reminder.  


Everyone the world sees and knows of your family inspires awe. You, twelve year old Jin Hua Bei Fong, must not do anything to compromise that legacy.  


I imagine my ancestors watching over me today, wondering with interest if I’ll ever find myself as a bender. I imagine them calling out to me, hoping I’ll turn around and see the boys behind—  


“Hey flower boy!” A powerful adolescent voice shakes me out of my daydream, followed soon after by a brusquely applied arm to the back of my neck. I scream out without thinking. I fall to the ground to get myself free of my classmate’s touch.  


“What, he’s so delicate, one touch and his petals wither!” Another boy, whose voice is familiar but whose tone seems uniquely sinister, perhaps affected. He laughs and then the other boy grabs me by the collar of my shirt and brings me back to my feet.  


“Let go of me!” I cry out. This isn’t a new experience for me. Like I said, being a part of a famous bending family is less fun than you think, especially when you’re like me.  


Especially when you can’t bend any element whatsoever.  


“You’re so touchy, Jin. All we wanted to do was say “Hi.””  


“You really need to loosen up. You’re so tense. Maybe a massage…?”  


“Great idea, Chin!”  


_No!_ These boys aren’t the only ones who like to harass me, but it’s gotten worse since everyone started going through puberty. Everyone knew I didn’t like to be touched, but I’ve noticed as the benders in my peer group have gotten older, the feelings of non-bending kids have mattered less and less to them. Especially non-bending kids from famous earthbending families.  


I swatted them away and made a run for it. The school yard had a lot of open space, a lot of clearly visible ground where someone, anyone, could see me, maybe even—  


“Hey!” Someone had come to save me. “Leave my brother alone!”  


A hunk of earth tore out of the ground and flung toward Chin, who caught it in his stomach and fell to the ground, heaving. The other boys fled, smaller bits of earth chasing after them like bees. My sister, Jingcha, had inherited my family’s bending prowess. I watch her walk over to me, her face stern, a little exasperated.  


“They didn’t hurt you, did they?” Her voice betrayed her look of detachment. Jingcha was known by all the boys around as a tough girl, someone who could break you over a stone pillar without hesitation. To me, she was just my twin sister. My twin sister who wished she had someone to spar with, who wished her brother wasn’t such a toothless turtleduck all the time. I wondered, often, what I was to her. But now, I felt like I could see some shred of familial love in her eyes, hear the faint sound of empathetic hurt.  


“I’m okay,” I told her. “I’m used to it.”  


“See, that’s your problem, Jin,” she said, as she always said. Whether she was telling me my stance was wrong or that I didn’t speak up enough or any of my other inadequacies, Jingcha never hesitated to offer her critique. “You shouldn’t be used to getting your butt kicked. And you shouldn’t be so used to your sister coming to your rescue, either.”  


“So you saving me is my fault?”  


“You giving me a reason to have to save you is—Never mind. Lunch is almost over. We’ve got to get back to class.”  


She was right. The school bell atop the clocktower was sounding its gong, signaling the end of lunch. Soon we would all be back in our desks, learning about the different provinces of the United Republic, memorizing and mentally cataloguing the various facts and figures we’d need to become functional and educated members of society, or something like that.  


And soon after that, I would be back home, safer than most moments I spent at school, but feeling a little less alone.  


But first, on my way up the stairs of my school building, I hear the voice of a friend.  


“Jin, wait up!” I stop mid-step and turn to see Iluq, probably my closest friend, hustling up the stairs to meet me. “What happened today? We were supposed to meet up by the old oak tree.”  


I start to come up with an excuse, but Iluq sees it coming. “I was just—”  


“You didn’t get harassed again, did you?”  


I wanted to lie, push it down, say nothing, but like my sister, Iluq had a way of getting things out of me. Instead, I bought myself some time. “We’ve got to get to class.”  


As we hustled up the stairs, edging past and between our fellow classmates, I wondered when Iluq would bring the subject back up, of my accidental flakiness this past lunch period. I wondered how I would explain how I had managed to get through it unharmed, but couldn’t fight my way through without my sister’s help.  


“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not mad at you.”  


“I know,” I said.  


“I just… I wish you would let me help you.”  


I stopped short of our classroom door. I looked at Iluq’s compassionate blue eyes, his slanted frown. I didn’t want to resent his offer to help, but for a fleeting moment, I did.  


“Next time,” I said, not sure if I was lying, not sure if I was putting on a kind face to avoid feeling anger.  


The class bell rang, and we both hustled into our classroom before the teacher closed the door behind us. Another day of school was nearing its close. Another day, another reminder…

~*~

I found my mother tending to the garden outside our house. Even though we live in a fairly urban part of the Republic, our neighborhood has enough open space for houses to have yards and gardens like ours. My mother has been really into gardening ever since she was a child living on Kyoshi, but she told me she went years without planting a single flower.  


“Hey mom,” I said, not wanting to startle her, but doing so anyway.  


“Oh, back from school already, Jin?”  


“Yeah,” I said, careful not to let on how I was feeling. “The day went by pretty fast.”  


“Was it a good day?”  


“It was… okay.” I blew it. She could always tell from how I spoke what my true feelings were.  


“Do you want to talk about it?”  


I almost wanted to cry. I was frozen by her question, and she knew it. “Come sit with me in the den. I’ll make us some tea.” She picked some fresh jasmine from the garden. Summer was almost over, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to use the fresh jasmine to make good tea, but I had a feeling she had plenty of prepared jasmine waiting for us inside. I agreed with a solemn nod.  


“Okay,” I muttered.  


“Okay,” said my mother, setting the teacup down in front of me. “What’s got you all caught at the throat?”  


My mother wasn’t a bender, but she must have been a waterbender in another life, because whenever she placed a cup of tea in front of me and asked me how I was feeling, it was like she opened the floodgates of my heart.  


“I just can’t… I just can’t seem to,” stop crying, find the words to explain how terrible the world made me feel inside, any number of things. “I want to be… a stronger person, than I am.”  


“Jin Hua,” my mother’s heart called out as she pronounced my name. It said, your strength is the strength of a lionturtle, as she was wont to say, when I got in these kinds of moods.  


I managed to tamp the flow of tears for a moment. “I know,” I said. “I’m a strong person. But the world makes me feel weak.” Jingcha hurling a rock at Chin’s stomach flashed across my mind. “I’m not an A student. I’m not an athlete. I’m just…”  


“You’re a precious sort of person, Jin. Do you know why I named you,”  


“You found out you were pregnant for me when you saw that flower, right?”  


“The color of gold. Shimmering in bloom. I had a premonition that night, or maybe it was just a dream.” A part of the story I hadn’t heard teased my heart. I wanted to wallow in self pity, but when my mom got talking, it was impossible for me for me to be snide and interrupt her. “I had a dream that I would have two children, two unbreakable, wonderful Bei Fong children. I had no idea that I would come to raise and know the two of you. You and your sister are everything to me, not because you are athletes, or artists, or straight A students, but because you never lose your luster, even when the world kicks you into the dirt.”  


Just then, Jingcha came through the doorway into the kitchen. Evidently, she had been listening. My mother’s smile seemed to quiver for a moment.  


“Good afternoon, Jingcha,” she said.  


Jingcha opened the icebox and pulled out a bottle of Lychee nut juice.  


“Hello, mother.” She saw my expression, my damp cheeks, and turned away to get a glass from the cupboard. “Did Jin tell you what happened today?”  


“He was beginning to, yes. I’ll let him tell the tale.”  


“Fine. Don’t let him forget to mention who bailed him out,” she said, pouring the lychee nut juice into her glass. A moment later, she had downed it.  


My mother wanted to say something, but she restrained herself.  


“Thank you, again,” I managed to mutter. “Sorry,” crept out of my mouth at the last moment.  


“Gee, now you thank me.”  


My mother started to protest my sister’s sarcasm, but mostly she felt preoccupied with the subtext of the conversation. She looked back at me, her loving eyes looking lost and confused. And then, after a moment, certain and sad.  


“Those boys tried to hurt you again, didn’t they?”  


I nodded. I was used to this conversation, the directions it took, the beats it inevitably rattled through. And as weary as my mother should have been of telling me, she nonetheless started in on the old routine. “Why are boys so cruel?”  


“Because it seems to be the only way they know how to grow up faster,” my sister said, which was a novel addition to the script. So much so that it threw my mother off track. She came to a halt in her thinking. And then, she said,  


“I think it’s time to give you the tools to teach them a lesson.”  


Jingcha, who was about to leave the room, turned back to face us. “What are you saying?”  


“I think you need to learn, as I learned, how to pacify and protect.”

~*~

There was a chest in the closet of my parents’ room that Jingcha and I had found one day when we were little. We came up with stories about what we thought would be inside it, but it took until just recently for either of us to learn the truth. When my mother brought us to her room, and left us standing as she dug past dad’s clothes and old shoes, it occurred to us, or to me anyway, that we had never outright asked Mom or Dad about what really was in the box. Our curiosity was overridden by imagination, and the question never made it to the surface.  


“You two know about this chest, don’t you?” my mother said, her voice partly muffled by the enclosure of her closet. “I’ve had it since you were little. When we moved to the city, I decided there was a part of me that I needed to retire. I suppose I was foolish…”  


When my mother emerged, she had a neatly rolled, but substantially large bundle of clothing in her arms. “Your past has a way of sticking around, and it usually does so for a reason.”  


She laid the bundle down on the floor and unfurled it in front of us, slowly, carefully. A fold was untucked here, a corner laid down there, and when she was through, what we saw made both our jaws drop.  


“That’s… Is that your armor, Mom?”  


The armor of a Kyoshi warrior, protected from the sun's bleaching rays, laid out before us. It seemed like a relic, something that had come out of a museum, or that had been flung through time toward us.  


"This armor belonged to your grandmother, and your great-grandmother before her. Women in my family, including myself, all served the island of Kyoshi as members of the Kyoshi Warriors. We defended the homeland of the great Avatar Kyoshi against those who would threaten peace, and under the guidance of great leaders as Ty Lee and Suki, and those who learned under their training, we learned the methods we would need to defend against threats more powerful than ourselves.”  


I looked to Jingcha, who seemed to be lost in thought.  


My mother lifted the armor from its resting place and began to unclasp its various pieces, separating it into the plating, the cloth, the head-dress, the gloves. Each aspect of the armor seemed to be its own entity, and soon, one of us would be wearing it. I never expected that it would be me.  


"Jin," my mother said. "Each part of the body is connected in a variety of ways. The most important connections are the connections we cannot see: the spiritual connections. We can impact those connections within the spirit by using precise blows to those parts of the physical self that control and moderate our spiritual flow. That flow is what enables our bodies to bend the elements, if we are so gifted."  


My sister smiled, but her smile went away when she saw that I was looking at her.  


"I've never faulted you for your inability to bend, Jin, and I have no reason to. But if you are ever to find the keys to your own release, you must understand your body, and your spirit. You must be able to see the unseen within."  


"So what do you want me to do?" Jingcha asked, looking at me suspiciously.  


"Jingcha, you know much about how to use your body to bend the elements, and I am so proud of the bender you have become already. But your brother has a task before him."  


"And what task is that?" I asked.  


"I want you to put this armor on. To do that, you must understand the connections between each piece, each aspect of the armor itself."  


I didn't see what doing what my mother told me to do would accomplish then, and I still have my doubts, but I nodded. Jingcha sighed and turned to leave the room. My mother stopped her. "You and I can wait outside for Jin to complete his task."  


With that, my mother and sister left me alone in the bedroom, with the disassembled suit of armor, and my thoughts.  


I had watched my mother carefully, as she unclasped each piece and set them aside. I started with the pants and skirt. I knew I would get my boots on last. Every piece felt heavy, substantial in my grip. I wondered how the Kyoshi Warriors, how my own mother, managed to wear this armor every day, even and especially as they fought. I pulled my hands through the leather platemail shirt and reached for the gloves. As my hands slid into the warm, insulated gloves, my heartbeat began to quicken. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. Was I hot, was I frightened? Or was this something more than a feeling? I took the gloves off quickly and knocked on the door to get my mother’s attention.  


“Mom,” I said. “Something doesn’t feel right?”  


The door opened and my mother appeared in the doorway.  


“Your leggings aren’t tucked into your boots, that’s what’s wrong.”  


“No, it’s not my boots… The gloves—I don’t think…”  


We looked over to the discarded gloves, each of us seeing something different.  


My mother picked up the gloves and inspected their insides, first with her eyes and then with her own hands. They had been fitted for her, so it made sense that they wouldn’t feel exactly right for me—but nothing ever felt exactly right for me. It rarely made me feel as uncomfortable as those enveloping garments did. It felt like as I reached my hands inside them, something else was reaching its hands inside of me.  


“There’s nothing inside them that I can feel, Jin. But putting on armor for the first time can always feel disorienting. The important thing to know is that this is not a costume. This is your heritage, something passed down to you by generations of my family.”  


“Maybe Jin can’t wear it because it’s for a girl,” Jingcha interjected. “Kyoshi Warriors are all women, right? Maybe it’s because he,”  


“I can wear it,” I said, suddenly feeling courageous. Jingcha shot me a look.  


“Kyoshi Warriors have traditionally been women, yes, but being a woman is not the necessary thing. It is only necessary to have a heart tempered for service, a heart prepared to protect those in need and disarm those who would seek to do harm.”  


It comforted me to know that no matter who I was, the Kyoshi Warriors could count me among them—but the condition my mother mentioned, the one that seemed to require courage and valor, gave me pause. As I was, could I really be worthy to wear the armor and bear the name of Kyoshi Warrior?  


For that matter, could I truly be considered someone worthy of the Bei Fong legacy?  


I knew I wasn’t really being inducted into the Kyoshi Warriors, but I could appreciate the gravity of my mother sharing this part of herself, of our heritage, with me.  
“Mom,” I said. “I can wear it. I’m ready.”  


My mother’s expression, always warm, always a force of calm, became sober, almost serious. “I know you are, Jin. But I want you to be certain of one thing before I help you put this on. There is nothing to be afraid of here. Whatever you feel when you put the armor on, it is not something to fear. It is something to embrace, and to accept.”  


All I could do was nod. It was as if my mother knew what was going to happen before it happened, and she wanted me to be ready for it. I believed in her words, but I could not foresee what gave her words grounds for such gravity.

One foot in, and then another. The cloth and leather cuirass, the plating across my torso, felt mildly suffocating, but otherwise fine. It was putting on the gloves that filled me with dread. Once they were on, there was no escape, there was no turning back. But what was it that I wanted to escape from, I could not articulate.  


“So far so good?” my mother asked, placing a hand on my shoulder. Even through the armor, I could feel her, but there was something different about the sensation. Normally I would have pulled away, even from her, but whatever the reason, I didn’t feel the urge.  


“So far so good,” I said, but my eyes were on the gloves, my mind on the feeling of being reached into. And then…  


The world went white. 

~*~

When I came to, I was in my bed. It was night or early morning. Something had stolen away my memory of what had happened between putting the gloves on and now, and I didn’t imagine it was anything good. No one was waiting by my bedside, so they couldn’t have been too concerned, but I was concerned more than my share.  


“Mom?” I said, and was immediately conscious of a hoarse feeling in my throat. Like I had been yelling… like I had been screaming.  


“…who should we call?”  


“This isn’t a medical issue, honey.”  


Dad’s voice. Dad was home and he was concerned. He was concerned about me.  


“Well we’re going to have to fix the roof, at least. But this is serious—Jin,”  


“Dad,” I said, walking into the den. “What’s going on?”  


My parents turned to look at me, their eyes communicating the usual love, now tempered by fear. “Jin Hua,” my name fell out of my mother’s mouth and she rushed to me, stopping just short of hugging me. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”  


“What happened? Did I do something? I heard Dad say something about the roof,”  


“Yes, well,” my father wasn’t sure what to say. “You did a number on it, son.”  


How? What had I done?  


I rushed to the room where I had tried on my mother’s armor and found the door ajar, almost dangling off its hinges, as if blown open by a strong gust of wind. The room was bathed in moonlight, dust drifting through the columns of light falling through the skylight that I could have sworn we didn’t have before. I walked in, stepping carefully, wary of the debris on the floor. A wave of confusion came over me, followed by a creeping sense of guilt. What Dad had said—I was the one who did this. I had blown a hole in the ceiling, with what appeared to be a jet of flame, judging from the remaining ceiling’s ashen appearance. Questions filled my mind as tears came to my eyes.  


“I didn’t… I don’t understand,”  


“Jin Hua,” my mother’s voice came into the room, softly. “It’s alright. We’ll fix this.”  


“Did I really do this, mom?”  


“When you put on the last glove, your eyes immediately began to glow. We believe,” she hesitated. “We believe that you might be the Avatar.”  


“The Avatar?” I didn’t need anyone to explain to me what that meant, but I couldn’t fathom it being true. Me, the one who could never bend. Me, the Bei Fong who couldn’t even bend a measly rock.  


Suddenly, it was possible that, on the very level I had always felt ashamed and inferior, I could stand to become a true master. But it still didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t—I had never bent the elements before. So why now? What was it about the armor that—  


“If Jin’s the Avatar, we’re all doomed.” There could be no doubt who had said that. Jingcha stood at the doorway, her mouth firmly shaped into a frown.  


“Jingcha,” my father said. “That’s no way to talk about,”  


“Jin is fearful, and weak, and he depends on everyone. He can’t even bend on his own. If anyone should be the Avatar, it’s,”  


“Jingcha, enough.” My mother was standing and staring hard at my sister, which was usually enough to make her storm out of the room. This time, Jingcha stood her ground.  


“It’s not fair,” she said. “Jin always gets everything, I don’t get it!”  


“You don’t get what?”  


Jingcha was strong with her fists, but her words often faltered, especially when she was angry. It was hard for her to keep herself calm; she was like boiling magma inside and she wanted to erupt. Tears came to her eyes and she ran out of the room.  


“Go after her,” my mother said. “She needs you, she won’t listen to me.”  


My father understood what she meant immediately. He followed after my sister without a beat of hesitation. My father was a talented craftsman. The attention to detail in his earthbending made him a brilliant mind for construction, and architecture. He wasn’t a fighter by nature, but he enjoyed the usual sports. He had his share of pro bending heroes, and he shared them with Jingcha. That was the language they both understood. As for me…  


“Jin,” my mother said. “We need to contact the White Lotus. You won’t be safe going back to school—not until you can control your Avatar spirit.”  


“But!” I panicked. I didn’t love school, or anything like that. I was sure I wouldn’t miss it. But Iluq, he would be lonely without me and I—I didn’t want to think about losing him. I didn’t want to think about all the pain and confusion I had caused, that I was causing at this very moment. I just wanted—  


“Please, Jin, I only want you to be safe. You need to learn from other benders, teachers who can protect you and guide you in becoming the Avatar you are destined to become,”  


“I don’t want to be a bender, I—I don’t know how,”  


“You will, my flower,” my mother embraced me then. “One day, you will be powerful beyond measure.”

_A vision—an old woman, long gray hair, cool blue eyes. On the ground before her, a broken machine, shaped like a person. Small, shattered, but twitching with life. I see these two figures through a veil of fog. I see them, and I know that the woman is talking, muttering something under her breath. I can only truly make out a few words being said.  
“…What have you done, Varrick?”_

“Jin!”  


I am startled awake, the sun is out, I am still in the den but—something is wrong. Cabinet doors have been blown open and some clean off their hinges, as if whipped by the raging of a sudden storm. I immediately start to cry, fearing for the worst: that my mother was harmed by my uncontrollable bending power, that my family had been taken from me. The voice, it was hers, wasn’t it?  


No, it was someone else.  


“I’m so glad you’re alright, dear. We’re all so glad you’re safe.”  


“I don’t know what I did, I don’t know—I didn’t mean to—”  


“It’s going to be okay, young Avatar. Because of what you did, it didn’t take long for us to get here. Because of your awakening, you have been found.”  


My eyes finally adjust to the morning sun, and in the wreckage of my kitchen, I see her: Asami Sato, wife of the late Avatar Korra, flanked by members of the White Lotus.


	2. Hands Into The Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iluq is a skilled ice dancer, a scholar-athlete and a steadfast friend. He and his family live in a Water Tribe neighborhood of Republic City. His life would be totally normal, if he weren't best friends with Jin Hua Bei Fong, the next Avatar. When Jin comes to Iluq for help, the two boys must work together to understand Jin's difficulty with controlling his bending and his emotions. Can Iluq help to solve the mystery of Jin's bending dysfunction? Or will the pursuit of truth and healing prove too perilous for either to survive alone?

I feel best when I’m spinning, spiraling, cutting roses into the ice beneath my feet. It’s never truly cold in the United Republic; there’s too much industry, too much pollution. When I was born, my parents were working on leaving the North Pole. The culture had grown too conservative, my father said, and it was no longer a place to raise children. My mother was from the southern tribe, and she suggested we move back to her home at the South Pole, but my father decided it would be best for me to live somewhere that had let go of orthodoxy and custom. He wanted a home for me that would embrace me, no matter who or what I became.

What I became, or what I’m becoming, is skilled.

My parents don’t understand why I’m so focused and driven, but they support me anyway, which I appreciate. Whether I’m working on my homework or my waterbending, they see the effort I put in, and they encourage it. The trouble is, they want me to be well rounded, so I feel like I’m often spread thin. Water accumulates in places, and when it freezes, it can help things stick together or, at times, break things apart. I feel like I’m not allowed to accumulate anywhere. Puddles, pools, rivers—all of those bodies have a reason to exist, a reason why they exist. I don’t know what my reason is, but sometimes I think—

Sometimes I think my reason is to be there for another person.

“Iluq, show me how you did that!”

“Iluq, what’s the answer to this last question?”

“Iluq, you have to help me!”

In my tribe, anyone can be a waterbender, but the abilities a person has are often secondary to the role they are supposed to play in the tribe. Even today, girls who use their waterbending to fight are called aggressive, intense. Wouldn’t it be better if you learned to heal? The elders would say. I’ve heard stories of Katara, one of Avatar Aang’s companions, who refused to let the North’s rules about who could learn waterbending keep her from becoming a true master. She was from the southern tribe, like my mother, like Avatar Korra. No one told her what to do, who she was supposed to become. She just became it.

“When you grow up, what kind of bender do you want to be?”

When I was little, I went to a Water Tribe Day School instead of an integrated school. My parents were afraid that living in the United Republic would keep me from knowing my culture, even though we ate Southern Tribe street food every weekend, even though most of our neighbors were benders, and waterbenders at that. I always saw different ways of being a bender, and of being a waterbender in particular, so it was odd to me that they felt I needed a special school to show me who I was, to help me learn the culture I had been born into. The way I saw it, the culture I was born into was a hybrid culture. Benders from all over the world come to the United Republic to find freedom from nations who constrain their identity and their expression, from homelands who no longer feel like home. They yearn to find a place where they belong, whether they can bend their home element or not. In the United Republic, it matters where you came from, but that matters less than the person you become. As a child of the North and South, the United Republic has been the only place that I have called my home. I appreciate my heritage, but I don’t especially care where I came from.

I want to know who I am, and who I can be, if I try my best. 

I know I’m too young to have all the answers, but so was Katara. And so was Aang. They grew up in a time of war, and they had to grow up fast. It may be peaceful now, but that’s only because Avatar Korra worked so hard to make it that way. The next Avatar has not been found in the Earth Kingdom. Ba Sing Se has never been the same since the Earth Queen was killed, all those years ago—and the Earth Kingdom at large, well, most of it is part of the United Republic now. I think that as the lines between the nations have become less defined, it has become more difficult for groups like the White Lotus to do what they were meant to do: find the Avatar, protect them, train them to become the bridge they must be in order to maintain peace. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to scour the world, hoping to find the young Avatar. It would be like searching the ocean for a drop of blood, or maybe, it’s like—

“Iluq, please! Are you in there? Answer me!”

I snap myself out of my pensive stupor. I know that voice, that tone.

Jin Hua Bei Fong, my best friend, needs my help, and he needs it now.

“I’m here!” I shout, not sure at first in what direction I need to go to find him. Is he outside my window, outside my bedroom door? I check both and find him down a story, outside, knocking on my front door. “I’ll come right down! Wait a sec,” 

Suddenly Jin does something I don’t expect. He propels himself into the air and grabs hold of my window sill. “Help! I didn’t mean to do that!” Fear; a more pronounced fear than I’m used to from him. I open my window and move to pull him inside, but he cries out before I can touch him. “I don’t want to hurt you, please! Don’t touch me.”

I realize what I have to do. I grab my travel canteen from the rack on my door and fashion a rope out of the water. I guide it toward Jin’s hands and weave it around his wrists. Then, I pull, and in he comes. We’re both breathing heavily, first from fear and then from relief. 

“Thank you, Iluq. I didn’t know where else to go,” he says. I don’t know why he’s scared, but I have a feeling it has something to do with his sudden ability to fly.

“Of course,” I say. “How can I help?”

“I…” Jin gets close to me, closer than he ever has. He just told me not to touch him and now he’s… “I just needed to get away from them.”

“From who? Your parents?”

This just makes him freeze up. A different kind of fear grips Jin, like the cold wind of winter. Instead of shivering, though, he holds himself tightly, as if something is threatening to pull him away. 

“My mom, I… I hurt her.”

“What do you mean? What did you do?”

“Ahhh! Ahhh!!!” Jin starts to cry out, in a way I’ve only heard him cry when someone has touched him without asking first. I know I need to back off, questions won’t help me understand what happened. I have to find another way. Waterbending is all about navigating points of resistance, understanding the flow of energy around and through other things. It can be smooth, rough, broad, precise. So, too, can a person’s words.

“I’m sure your mom is okay, Jin. She… She’s a strong woman. You would never hurt her on purpose.” To reassure someone, you can’t demand anything from them. You have to accept their feelings as they are, and meet them with a front of strength and calm. I must be a glacier.

“I hurt her! I hurt her, and I was scared, because, because—”

When water comes at you fast, there are a few things you can do to avoid being washed away: You can stem its flow, by freezing it at its source; you can make yourself the point of resistance, and let the water rush past and around you; or you can accept the torrential outpouring with grace and calm. You can become what the water needs, and in doing so, you become what the water is. The water surrounds you, and you surround it, and then—

“You were scared. Something frightened you, and you had to protect yourself.”

_ It’s what you’ve always done, Jin, as long as I’ve known you.  _

~*~

A child with balled fists, thrashing about in a tearful rage—that’s how I remember you, back when we first met. I watched as a teacher ushered you away from the other children, to take you somewhere. I had no idea where, but wherever it was, it was a better place. Calmer. No one was supposed to touch you. That’s what the teachers told us. 

“Jin is a special sort of child,” they said. “It seems human touch, when it is unwanted, is harmful to him. If you want to touch Jin, or hold his hand, you must ask for his permission first.”

I remember everyone being afraid to ask Jin anything. I remember hearing children talking about you in hushed tones. I remember, before I even knew her, that your sister, Jingcha, was a special sort of child as well. She had no fear of human contact. She loved contact sports, and was rough with other children. Her intensity scared other girls and invited ire from other boys. When anyone approached you, she would roar and rasp like a lionturtle to fend them off. When I approached you, what she said was,

“What do you want, blue eyes?”

“I wanted to ask him a question,” I said.

“You can ask me first,” she said, firm, her stance like a pro-bender’s, ready for anything I could throw her way. She seemed like your older sister, but I knew she was your twin. Your hair was even cut the same, though hers resisted a comb, and looked matted in places.

“I want to know… what your favorite color is.”

Jingcha didn’t seem to think this was a terribly dangerous question to impart to her brother, and to me, it seemed at first like she wanted to answer for herself. But really I think that she was curious to know, as we were all curious to know, what was going on inside your head. You could speak, and you could write, and you could listen. You didn’t speak much back then. Every note that emerged from your mouth was of a fearful song. The world was too much for you, and I feel like, little by little, the world was beginning to think you were too much for it to accept. But I knew you were at least a little bit like me. I may not have felt the intensity of feeling that you did, but there was something swirling inside me that longed for release. It longed to be of use, to be seen and understood. It longed to reach out, and to help.

“I like… blue. Like your eyes. They’re calm, but I’m…”

I could sense something about to boil over. 

Jingcha could sense it too. It made her angry.

“I like your eyes, too,” I said. And this is when I saw you for the first time, clearly.

You smiled, and your eyes were looking directly into mine. I could see that your eyes were the color of gold, and I knew exactly why your name was—

~*~

“Iluq,” he says, and I am breathless. I want him to trust me. I’ve never wanted anything more than to make the boy who’s afraid of being touched be unafraid to touch me, to be touched by me. I want to comfort him, enclose him, make him certain that no harm will be done to him. I want that, but—  
“Iluq, they’re saying I’m the Avatar.”

I want that, but I’m not allowed to want anything.

“Who’s saying that? Your parents?”

“The White Lotus came to my house and Miss Sato was there with them. She told me there was a light they could see from the sky—and it was coming from my house.”

“And that means you’re the Avatar… of course. It all makes sense.”

“What does?” What a question. I had to be careful not to let on too much. 

It’s not that I knew everything there was to know about the Avatar, and I certainly didn’t have all the answers about Jin and… the way he was. But in the readings I had done about Avatar history, I had learned that there was no standard origin for an Avatar. Some Avatars were said to be naturally gifted with their home element, while others discovered their bending by accident. Not every Avatar was like Avatar Korra, who was physically skilled with bending even from an early age. The path of the Avatar was a singular one, but the life of the Avatar was one that necessarily involved and implicated the lives of others. Even Avatar Wan, entered into the historical record by Avatar Korra, had his animal companion—and of course, the light spirit, Raava. If Jin was really the Avatar, that meant he would need people to guide and protect him on his path toward becoming the bridge, toward becoming the great mediator between the physical and spiritual worlds.

Maybe, no—definitely, he would need someone like me.

“Jin, if you’re the Avatar like you say, you don’t have to be afraid. You’re not gonna be alone in this, okay? You’ve got me. You’ve always had me, and you always will.”

“I… Thank you, Iluq. I know you’re on my side and I… I really need a friend.”

“Hey, if you need me, I’m here.”

“I need a friend that I can trust. A friend who can make my insides quiet.”

And then he does something that startles me. He takes my hand in his.

“Iluq, my mom always says that I’m a special sort of person. She says I’m going to need guides and teachers so that I can become a good bender—a good Avatar. But I don’t want that. I just want to hold someone’s hand and not be afraid. I want to hold and be held and not be afraid of—and not be afraid to,”

With my free hand, I cup his hand gently. I’m almost afraid to touch him with my fingers. When I do, I’m not sure which one of us is shaking. Maybe we both are.

“I won’t say you’ll never be afraid again. But what I will say is, if you’ll trust me, I won’t leave your side. I won’t let anyone hurt you or push you around.”

~*~

I’ve always wanted to be Jin’s strength, the one who could support him and fill in the gaps in his weaknesses. I thought I could keep him afloat, keep his heart aloft. 

But he was dense and he was heavy; there was very little any of us could do to help him. I wasn’t innocent of thoughts that Jin was someone to be fixed, someone to be solved. Even once I made friends with him, I thought of Jin like a puzzle. If I directed the water’s flow in this direction, what would happen then? What would his reaction be? I had managed to get him to smile once; how could I make that happen again, and more often? I don’t know if you could call what I did manipulative, but to me, making friends with Jin felt a lot like waterbending.

I always knew there were points of resistance I had to pass gently around. Touching them directly would cause him to retreat, avoid, distrust me. Over time, it felt like we could talk about almost anything. However, Jin never asked me to defend him, not even when the bullying got worse and the other boys became more aggressive.

“I wish you would let me help you,” I told him, and his response told me everything.

“Next time,” he said. Jin knew he needed defending. He hated it. 

I worried that soon, he would hate me, just for wanting to help. I wanted to be close to him, I wanted him to want to be close to me. I was his supporter, and I wanted him to really believe my motives were good. But they weren’t good, were they?

Water can soothe, it can be a healing salve, but it can also be biting to the touch—or scalding. There is a duality to all things, and to all people. Waterbending is no different. There is beauty and there is danger in it—and I am the one charged with deciding which rises to the surface. I learned to skate because I wanted to master the beauty of ice, the elegance, the precision of it all. When I’m spinning on the rink, the ice-blade extending from my sole helps me carve myself into the frozen ground at my feet. I can tuck into myself, speed and slow my spinning, and stand to stabilize. I can do things that the pros can do, and I’m just a kid.

I push myself so hard, and nobody even knows. There’s no figure skating club at school. This is just for me. But I want it to be for someone else, too. I want people to know me, not just as the straight A student, not just as the loyal friend, but as the person I can become—the potential I have to become someone strong, and powerful—and good.

But good is not the way I feel when I see kids pick on Jin. I feel sick with anger. I feel desperate with rage. I want to reach into those boys and grab them by the heart.  _ You will  _ never _ harm him, ever again. You will never harm  _ anyone. I want to protect him, I want to be the one they direct their anger at, because I know that my ice is unbreakable. The frozen rink I skate on is soft beneath my feet; it parts like water as I glide and leap, and I know I have mastered it. I just want the chance to show everyone how hard I’ve worked, in private, with no one asking.

If Jin cannot face his fears, I will face them for him. I will face it all.

~*~

Jin rises from the floor and turns away from me. Without seeing his face, it’s difficult to know what he’s thinking, but I want—I want to say,

“I know you want to defend me, and protect me. Everyone thinks that I’m this fragile flower—even my mom. But the truth is, I don’t think I’m fragile at all.”

Jin turns around and holds an open palm towards me, as if offering me to take it. Then, a jet of flame bursts from his hand, narrowly avoiding the ceiling before coming down to a safe level. Jin’s expression is firm, the fire’s glow bringing out the gold in his eyes.

“I think I’m too powerful for this world.”

“Iluq, honey, is everything okay up there? I thought I smelled smoke.”

Jin puts his fire away quickly, and I am more relieved than anything.

“Everything’s fine, Mom,” I say. “Just doing some meditating.”

I look at Jin with amazement. I knew that he could bend air—that’s what enabled him to rocket himself up to my window. What I hadn’t expected was that he could bend fire, too. What was most amazing to me was that fire was something he bent with passion and confidence. It was a power I had never seen him demonstrate and frankly, it was…

“How long have you been able to do that,” I ask, breathless. Bubbling to the surface.

“I couldn’t do anything before today. Well, last night.” This is a clue, but I can’t probe.

“How does it feel?” I ask. “To be able to bend, I mean.”

“It feels a little bit scary, but also… exciting.” A careful smile appears on his face. Today is his first day as a bender. I can still remember how it felt, to feel the push and pull of the tides, and to be able to push and pull them right back. We were on a shuttle boat coming from the North Pole. I was seven. My mother let me try and bend the water out of her canteen. It took me a little bit of back and forth but I managed to bring all of her canteen’s contents out into a globe of water, along with some of the ocean spray. The boat veered slightly off course and the crewman asked us to avoid bending for the rest of our voyage.

It was something we laughed about, later. “I’m so proud of you,” my father said.

“You’re going to be a force of nature, Iluq.”

In my mind, I already was. I had reached into the ocean without even meaning to, and I had pulled something out of it. It would be a long time before I could put my hands into the water and learn the things that can only be learned by touching it directly—but my bending journey had begun. 

Now, Jin’s journey as a bender—and an Avatar—is beginning, and I can tell this is a responsibility he does not take lightly.

“I’m glad there’s a part of you that’s excited, Jin,”

“I’ve always felt like something was wrong with me. All the other kids could bend, and I couldn’t do… anything.”

“We do have a lot of benders at our school,” I said. Maybe even more than average. Non-benders were still in attendance (Jin was not a minority of one—at least, not before today) but the bending population of our school, and the United Republic at large vastly outweighs that of the non-benders. My science teacher says it’s because bending is a dominant gene but that feels confusing to me. There’s nothing wrong with being unable to bend. A lot of the non-bending kids in our class are even smarter than me. They can be soft and sensitive like an airbender or tough and rowdy like an earthbender—but they lack command over the elements. They lack a road map telling them—showing them how to use their bodies, their hearts, their minds. But they don’t lack in character. 

Jin never lacked in character, that’s for sure. Whether he’s the Avatar or something entirely new, Jin Hua Beifong has always been amazing to me, and that won’t change.

“Does it feel different? Being able to bend fire?” I ask.

“Different compared to what?”

“Compared to, well, how it was before. When you made a fist and nothing came out.”

I watch as Jin considers my words. He slowly closes his hand into a fist. 

“I don’t think that’s how it works, Iluq.”

Nothing had come out. No fire, no air, like before. And I guess that makes sense. Bending is not just physical. It is spiritual, mental, emotional. Jin’s bending had to be all of those things, but this was only his first day as a bender. He couldn’t just think, “Fire,” and have fire come out. I mean, I assume that’s how it is for firebenders. I’ve never really thought about it, to be honest.

“When you made that flame earlier, what did you think?”

“I didn’t think anything,” Jin says. “It was more of a feeling.”

Jin’s bending had to be tied to his emotions—but he was always so strongly emotional before, and he couldn’t bend a rock. Why was that? I had thought Jin was a puzzle before—now he was practically a riddle. More importantly, though, he was a friend.

“When you were scared, you airbended. What did you feel when you made fire?”

Jin is silent for moment, pensive. Maybe he isn’t sure what to say, or maybe, he is certain of what he feels and is afraid to say it.

“Iluq,” he says. “I felt rage. I felt all of my anger, and I let only a little bit out.”

Thank goodness he had restraint; my house could have gone up in flames.

“Have you been feeling angry a lot lately?”

“I’m always angry, but,” he took a breath. “I’m not allowed to show it.”

“Why not?” This, from the brother of Jingcha, from the brother of the girl who boxed boys bloody on the playground. Why could he not show his anger?

“The teachers, they taught me to hold my emotions inside and control them. They taught me breathing exercises I could do to keep everything from spilling out, to keep me from falling apart.”  
“Jin…” It all made sense. When they would take Jin somewhere better, somewhere calmer, they would teach him how to manage his emotions. But he had to channel those emotions somewhere, didn’t he? Otherwise he—otherwise, he would— 

“I’m sorry, Iluq. I’m wasting your time. Thank you for letting me calm down.”

“Jin, I want,”

“I should leave. Everyone’s probably looking for me.”

“Jin! You’re not listening. Wait. I want you to come with me,” I say, rising from my seat on my bed. “If you’re the Avatar, you need to be able to bend more than just fire and air.”

“I don’t want to be,”

“I know, you’re afraid right now. But to be a bender, you have to let go of fear.”

These were Avatar Aang’s words. I knew everything there was to know about him. The official history of the Avatars of the recent past was much more detailed than those of the other Avatars, at least outside of their respective nations. I knew a couple Avatars before Avatar Kuruk from the Water Tribe, but only because I had done my research. I knew that there were a lot of ways to be an Avatar. There were also a lot of ways to guide an Avatar, too.

I may not have been a master, but I could be a guide, and more than that, I could be a friend. That was enough for me, as long as I could know that Jin was safe and taken care of. Not much mattered more to me than that.

“Where do you want me to go?” Jin asks.

“I’ll show you,” I say.

~*~

There was a room in the basement of my house that held a small reservoir. Most waterbending houses in the city had something like it. Sink water was fine for most purposes, but it wasn’t generally good quality. The water in the reservoir was connected to the natural bodies of water found throughout the city. When a waterbending family moved into their house, a healer from the Embassy would bring spirit oasis water to anoint the reservoir. The healer was usually a woman, but the one who came to our house was tall and muscular. They looked more like my father than my mother, but their voice was smooth like a gentle stream. I was seven years old and I saw someone who looked like I felt; strong, but gentle; a quiet power; a ball of ice, covered in snow. It was then that I determined I would learn how to heal. While the other boys practiced water whips and made sculptures, I learned what it took to heal a cut using only water. I knew how long it took to mend a shallow wound, and I understood what was different about burns compared to cuts and scrapes.

“You could be a doctor,” my father said. “If we still lived in the north, I’d send you to medical school.”

He knew that healing was a passion project of mine, but he never let me focus on it too much. “Learn the way that water moves; let it guide you into being the person you most want to be,” he would say. What I wanted to be was precise. What I wanted to be was an expert.

Healing was not something you could get ‘better’ at, per se. It was an exercise of patience. You were only as good as the tools you used, which, in my case, was water. In order to use waterbending to heal, you needed pure, clean water and a patient soul. Your hands needed to be steady. All of your concentration, all of your intention needed to be set on repair. The process of mending a wound of your own could be painful, but mending another’s wound was usually a waiting game. Healing usually doesn’t feel particularly good, I’ve found. But once it’s over, I always feel better, stronger, ready to take on the world.

I used ice skating to engage with my body in a world that wouldn’t let me fight, and I used healing to engage my mind, and give me an outlet for the swirling, spiraling feeling I had inside. If Jin was anything like me, his mind was filled to the brim with thoughts he needed to let come to the surface. Whenever I had no more space in my mind, I always came down here, to the reservoir. I made shapes with ice and turned them back to water again. I put my hands in and pulled out my dreams, my fantasies. All around me they would flow, healing me, revealing me to no one, but myself. I could pantomime rage, joy, love, hate, pain—and I could release it from within me. 

If Jin’s bending was emotional, water could be his way into himself—and his way out.

“This place is dark,” he says, as we descend the stairs to our basement. “Is there a light we can turn on?” I could hear the fear in his voice, slight, like a draft. 

“There isn’t, but don’t worry,” I say. “We’ll be able to see plenty.”

I venture into the dark. I know my way around, and it doesn’t actually look all that dark to me. My mom says it’s because waterbenders are strongest at night, when the sun’s presence can only be sensed in the moon’s glow. But in total darkness, for some reason, I am most calm. I kneel down in front of the reservoir. I put my hands into the water. 

I set my intention, and it glows.

“How are you doing that?” Jin asks.

“This is what it looks like when a waterbender uses water to heal.”

“It’s beautiful,” he says. Breathless. 

I smile, the edge of my face cut from the darkness by the pale blue light emanating from my palms. “I think so too. Come sit with me,” I say. I watch as Jin braves the darkness, careful not to trip over anything. There’s nothing for him to trip over down here, though. A reservoir is not the same as a normal basement or an attic, really. It’s a sacred space, a place personal to all those who wield water. Specifically, it is my sacred space, and I keep it clean.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to put your hands in. It can be a finger at a time, but I want you to just feel the water on your hands.”

“I don’t think I can do what you’re doing. What if I can’t,”

“You don’t have to do anything. Leave everything to me. Just focus on breathing.”

I have a theory about Jin that I’ve been working on: a theory about his relationship to touch. He physically recoils at unwanted touch, but that’s at least understandable. No one likes to be touched without someone asking. For Jin, however, it is far too extreme a reaction to be normal. He must have been touched at an early age, in a way that was too painful for him to fathom. Such a wound is not easy to see, or easy to heal. But in darkness, in the coolness of water, it is easier to discern the root of pain. Every point of resistance can be unknotted, detangled, soothed through. Water is the best way to erode stone without destroying it. I think that Jin has a stone at the deepest part of himself, and, maybe, that stone has a crack. If I can just find my way there, I can—

Jin kneels down to my level and gingerly offers his first hand to the reservoir to take. His fingers are enveloped and then—nothing. No light, no change in temperature. 

“Everything good?”

“It feels nice,” he says. I smile.

“It’s the purest water you’ll find in the city. You’d have to go to the North Pole to find something more pure.”

“Have you ever been there, Iluq? To the North?”

“…It’s where I was born.” 

~*~

I am struck by the fact that Jin had never asked me where I came from before. Questions of “North?” or “South?” were familiar—and annoying—to me, because I was both. My mother moved to the North when she met my father, but it was never home to her. As a teenager, my mother was an amazing dancer. She performed intricate routines in a bending troupe at Southern festivals, and my father was making his way around the world when they met. They didn’t fall in love at first; my mother was very professional about their connection. But my father said that from the moment he saw her, he knew:

“She could bend water with amazing strength, but she used her power to dazzle and amaze, not destroy. I loved that about her. I really admired her.”

My mother said her joints hurt whenever I asked her to show me her bending style. But I knew she was lying, covering up her inner beauty. I think it exhausted her, to not have an outlet for everything she had inside. I know it exhausted me. 

The boots I wear are perforated, and the soles are iced over, but they’re designed in a way that lets me always have water on my person. Metal skates need to be polished or they rust. Skates that use ice are much more flexible and easier to maintain. When I go to the rink, I can be alone in a crowd. My path is singular, my flow entirely my own, and although I can weave through and around everyone, it never feels like I’m avoiding anything. I wonder if I was an airbender in another life. I wish I could be carefree like that all the time. On the ice, I feel most at home. I want my mother to see me the way I feel inside. I think I feel exactly like she did: wielding great power inside, but focusing it to a fine point, and opening that point out into a great spiral of wind, and water, and—

When Jin told me, “I think I’m too powerful for this world,” I had thought to myself, 

“You and me both, buddy.” But the truth I think is less extreme. I’m not too powerful for my world. Water conforms to its container. When it is brought into the open air, it can grow and change, connect with other bodies and become more powerful, greater than it would have been all alone. I feel like my body is too small to contain my mind. Avatar Korra’s water—I can’t say what it was to her, but to me, water is thought and feeling. It is word and image—and it is as much a part of me as I am a part of it. I am not too powerful for the world.

I am filled to bursting, bigger than my body gives me space to become.

~*~

Another hand of his enters the reservoir and I return my hands to the water’s cool grasp. I set my intention, not to heal—but to see. At first there is no glow coming from my hands. And then, I hear the breath beside me fall away. I feel it give way to a bright blue light—not unlike the moon. I open my eyes, and I see Jin, his hands still submerged, his eyes and mouth agape and overflowing with light. _Show_ _no fear, he can feel every part of you._

A voice. A voice unfamiliar to my ears and yet so comforting. I’m afraid to speak.

Who are you? My hands search for a presence in the water and find none.

_ You hold a legacy in your blood, Iluq. You and Jin, both, have inherited great gifts. _

It isn’t a woman’s voice, or a man’s for that matter. It sounds like a voice out of a dream.

How can I help Jin? How can I be his guide?

_ Jin does not need a guardian. He needs a spear, a shield and armor to match. _

What can I be for him? A shield? His armor?

_ You must follow your heart. You can wield water’s cold fury and loving warmth, both. You are as the water is: flexible, capable of acts of great love as well as fearsome power. In order to become Jin’s guide, you must seek yourself in the deepness of the coldest sea. _

I’m not sure what that meant, but—Suddenly the light emanating from Jin’s eyes are the only points of light I can see. His mouth is closed. His eyes dim and then—

_ Take a deep breath, young frost. You must be as the water is—or you will drown. _ _  
_ The reservoir suddenly consumes us both and swirls in all directions, a floating whirlpool suspended in the air. It is searching—he is searching—for a way out. 

It returns to its source and we are carried through the sluice gate into the great underground canal. For one moment, I am able to free myself from its hold, for a breath, just one deep breath and then—

The cool, swirling darkness takes a hold of me once more. There must be air, there must be light—there must be a way out. I realize what I have to do as my last ounce of breath threatens to burst free from my lungs. I root myself to the floor that the water’s membrane creates, and I twist as it does, until I can send the water—and us—hurtling upward, into the black. There is a ring of light—I reach for it, extending the water as high as I can bring it to go—and with the release of my last breath—the water explodes.

We are sent through an opening, into the open air. My eyes open and I can see the city streets below. The evening sun is setting, the autumn breeze brushes my wet hair out of my face. I see Jin, no longer glowing, and I use the water around us to bring him close to me.

I surround us in snow—and we fall.


	3. In Hot Pursuit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jingcha Bei Fong has just learned that her twin brother is the next Avatar, and she is far from overjoyed. After spending half her childhood defending Jin from bullies, Jingcha is at a loss for what to do now, what role she is to play--and how she is to handle her own inner weaknesses. Can she set aside her ego and help to protect her brother? Or will she become his most fearsome, final assailant?

No one mistakes me for my twin brother. There’s never a doubt in anyone’s mind who is who. We don’t dress the same. We don’t talk the same. We don’t even have the same eye color. There’s not a thing we have in common. What they sometimes do is, they pretend to not know which one of us is the boy, and which one of us is the girl.

“Are you sure you’re a girl? You’re so buff.”

“Is that armpit hair, Jingcha?”

“You’re so intense, rough, intimidating--”

Masculine is a word we learned in school recently. I had heard words like it used before, but they never felt like they applied to me. I was not a manly six year old. I did not, as a ten year old, have a desire to be a boy. I wanted to be an athlete, a pro-bender maybe, or maybe I could make up my own sport, one that only the most powerful Earthbenders could compete in. My dad and I used to go to pro-bending tournaments together. We knew all the best teams. My dad works in construction, so he knows the fundamentals of earthbending: brick making, foundations, scaffolding, that kind of stuff. He’s never been a fighter. One time he told me, when he was in school, people would make fun of him for building things in the sand--but he knew that sandbending was something only some earthbenders could do, and few of them could do it very well. My father always told me that what I did with earth was my business. It was personal, and if anyone had something to say about it, I should stand my ground. My mother, meanwhile, must have been an airbender in a past life.

“Jingcha, dear, please settle down.”

“Jingcha, don’t be rough with your brother."

“Jingcha, help Jin out with that, will you?”

I’ve never been able to understand her--and the older I get, the less she seems to understand me. I know she’s from Kyoshi, and I know that she used to be a fierce warrior--or least, that’s what Dad tells me. He tells me that, when mother was young, she was a talented chi-blocker. The Kyoshi Warriors were trained in both the use of fans and in close-quarters pacification.  
“Pacify and Protect,” their motto said, and that’s what my mother wanted to teach me. She would say things like, “The body contains pathways for the spirit to run through. If the energy within a person is disrupted, it changes what they are able to do, what they are able to feel.” I would nod, pretending to understand, but never really seeing what she was describing. My body didn’t feel like a flowing river, and I didn’t want it to. I worked to make myself stronger, more resistant to pain, quicker on the draw against anyone who would try to hurt me, against anyone who would try to get close to--

“Jin!”

Jin is my twin brother, but it’s hard for me to think of us as the same. We may be family, but I’ve always had to take care of him. He’s weak and powerless and has trouble connecting with people--he always needs someone to look after him, to keep stupid boys from kicking him in the dirt. Girls aren’t much better; they giggle at him behind his back. I’m not sure if he hears them, but I do. I hear every word and with every joke, with every stupid sneering smile, my heart gets harder. I wish they would stop judging him. I wish they would stop making fun of his shy nature. I wish they would stop being cruel, awful little monsters. I wish I could stop them.

The harder I try, though, the harder it gets for me. When we were little, Jin and I, we were always together, except when Jin had to go with the special teachers to calm down. I remember the first time they did this, I refused to let go of his hand.

“You can’t take him! He needs me!"

“Dear, Jin is having trouble controlling himself. We need to help him learn how to act appropriately. Now, can you please let go of his hand?”

“No, I can’t! Can I please come with you?”

I was scared. I was scared that if I let go of Jin’s hand, he would never hold mine again. I was scared and I was angry and I just wanted--

“You need to let go,” the teacher said.

I didn’t struggle. I didn’t shout. I had to keep my hurt inside; I had to hold everything I felt inside, for him, for her, for everyone. I had to watch Jin get taken away from me, over and over again. I had to watch him retreat further and further into himself. One day, he stopped crying out for help. One day, he stopped asking me to save him. But he never stopped needing me.

~*~

“Jingcha, please come back! We need to talk about this.”

My dad was calling for me to come back to the house. He probably thought that I was running away scared, but it was nothing like that. I was pacing in the alley, trying to get my anger out. Usually I would shadowbox, send a couple loose bricks shooting down the alleyway, but a few broken picket fences ago, I decided I needed to find another way to deal with how I felt. Whether it was a better way, I didn’t care.

“Jingcha, you shouldn’t be upset.”

That set me off. I wanted to stomp the ground and send a pillar up in the middle of the street, but that would probably cause an accident. My cousin Jampa told me that’s why the Republic City police started employing airbenders--they can catch criminals without tearing up the roads. That doesn’t mean they don’t still need earth and metalbenders, but it’s a lot easier to rescue people when you can fly.

“I’m not upset, I’m angry. I don’t understand this at all.” I say this, and I don’t want anyone to hear me. I say this and feel my breath become heavier. They say that when you get angry, you can see red. I don’t know what the world looks like to everyone else; I’m not even sure if people see the same colors as me, if my red is really red, if my gold is really gold.

“Jingcha, honey. I know you’re surprised and confused. We all are. Imagine what your brother is feeling. Imagine how scary this must be for him.”

“Of course it’s scary! He’s afraid of everything! He can’t even put his hand in mud without screaming! He can’t even earthbend--he can’t even do anything!”

I hear the very earth around me splinter and crack. The ground at my feet looks like a webbing of lightning bolts, snaking across the concrete and up the walls of the alley.

“When the foundation of a building is broken or fractured, the whole building is almost guaranteed to fall.” My father told me this, and as I watch the lightning bolts begin to slow their ascent, I realize what I have to do. I run out of the alley and back toward my house, and as I get clear of the alley’s shadows, bricks begin to come loose from the buildings and fall to the concrete below. The buildings won’t come down, but they’ll need some surface repairs.

“Come here Jingcha, come inside now.” My father’s voice is calm, water flowing down a rock-faced mountainside. “Jingcha, you need to control yourself, and you need to listen to me.”

“Dad, I--I’m sorry, I don’t,”

“Your brother is the Avatar. He may not be able to do the things you can, right now. He may not be a powerful earthbender, like you are. He needs you to be his ally, not his enemy.”

“I don’t want to--”

“You may not want to help him, but you need to, just as you always have. We all need to do our part to help protect him. Jingcha, Jin is in terrible danger.”

My dad is usually a very good listener, but today he had no time for my feelings. He had no time to waste listening to what I had to say.

What he thought I wanted to say was,

“I don’t want to help Jin.”

What I actually wanted to say was this:

“I don’t want to have to help Jin. I’ve helped him all my life, all his life. I have fought, and I have striven, and I have grown stronger than anyone I know. I have grown stronger than my body has a right to be, stronger than my mind can handle. I am twelve years old and I am holding something inside of me that I cannot see outside of myself, something that I am afraid to see come out of myself. I am twelve years old but I feel so much older, and I am terrified of the possibility that I will die before anyone sees me for who I am inside.”

What I told him was this:

“Dad, I’m scared. Dad, I’m so scared because I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

His firm and serious tone softened, and I could see the dad I had always known and loved as clear as day. In his eyes I could see the little sand bender he told me he was. He really was a good listener, because I knew that he cared about what I said. He really heard me, and he could see me just as clearly.

“Jingcha, there’s nothing wrong with you. What do you mean?”

I wasn’t sure what I meant. I just felt like, since I had heard my parents talking about Jin, about the possibility of him being the Avatar, there was something wrong with me. There had to be something wrong with me. I had been working so hard, becoming the best earthbender I could be, becoming someone strong enough to protect my brother from anything and anyone in the world--and now my brother was going to be the one; the one strong enough to protect the world from every threat, from every evil agent who would attempt to do it harm. I felt like--it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to me. He was going to become more powerful than me--he was going to become more powerful than anyone--and I was going to have to protect him, and I was going to have to stay strong, just as strong, maybe even stronger--for him.

“What about me, Dad? Who’s going to protect me?”

The ground at my feet did not crack. The earth beneath me was solid, like iron--not the soft dirt I was used to. And when I fell to the ground, and my eyes pinched closed, hot tears streamed down my face. Everything felt hot, burning, searing, even. I began to hyperventilate.

“Jingcha! Be careful, please calm down!”

“Who’s gonna protect me, Dad? Who’s gonna help me when I’m scared? Who’s gonna help me when I can’t be there--for me?”

I heard the rush of wind before I felt it surround me and lift me off the ground. The current of wind curled itself beneath me and held me aloft and I--

“Jingcha, honey, it’s going to be okay, let me help you.”

“Jampa? What are you doing here?”

My cousin Jampa, clad in her Rescue Corps uniform, had bent the air around me into a protective sphere, and lifted me into the sky above my house. I looked down and I--I couldn’t believe what I could see. There was a red circle of earth, outlined by a radius of bright orange rifts where once there had just been the softness of brown dirt. I had bent the earth below me to metal--and the earth around me had turned to magma. It was rising from below the ground, trying to reach me--and it almost had completely consumed me before Jampa had arrived to save me. How had she known? How had she known what I needed?

“The police saw the same light that the Lotus did. Your house is in my district, so I needed to confirm the reports. Turns out I was too late for Jin--your mother said he ran away. But luckily I was just in time to save you.”

Jampa was like a big sister to me. When Jin and I were little, she would always play with us. She was good with kids, but she was also very strong. She would make muscles and let me feel them. “When you’re my age, you’ll be twice as strong,” she’d say. I couldn’t believe it, but that didn’t keep me from wanting to make her proud.

“Thank you for--for saving me.”

“Of course, cuz. You’re important to me, but I would have saved you even if you were a stranger. That’s just what I do.”

Jampa had the most beautiful eyes. They were the perfect mix of yellow and green, and her skin was tan, like my Aunt Opal’s. She looked a lot like Uncle Bolin, really. They were both amazing athletes, but Jampa didn’t want to be a pro-bender. She wanted to use her airbending to help save people.

“You said,” we finally touched down on the ground, and I immediately took a breath. I hadn’t realized how frightened I was, being suspended in the air. Even with Jampa holding me up, I hadn’t been able to notice how every part of me wanted to be back on solid ground. “You said Jin ran away? When?”

“Miss Sato told me he ran away almost as soon as she introduced herself. He wouldn’t let the Lotus members touch him, or even help him get to his feet. He brought himself to his feet with airbending and bolted.”

It didn’t surprise me that Jin was afraid, or that he would take the first opportunity to run away. It didn’t even surprise me that he was airbending like he was. What surprised me was that he could stand on his own two feet and defend himself. I had to see it to believe it. “Jampa, I think we should go after Jin. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“I’m sure the police in the area can track him down wherever he goes.”

“That’s what I’m saying. If the police find him, I’m afraid that they’ll hurt him.”

Jampa’s expression was--I’m not sure how to describe it. Was she offended? I don’t think she was surprised to hear me say what I said. I think she was upset that even a kid could see that the police had no idea how to handle someone like Jin.

“I can bring you with me, Jingcha, but… You’re gonna need to strap onto me. We’re going to need to take to the sky.”

“I can handle it,” I said, ignoring my body’s signals of refusal. “I know where Jin would go. I can show you how to get there.”

“How do you know where he went?”

I smiled, just a small one.

“He’s my twin. I’ll find him.”

~*~

  
I remember, a long time ago, Jin ran away from home. At first, none of us had any idea why he had done it. He had done it late at night, when everyone was asleep. We didn’t share a bed anymore, so when he decided to run away, he was able to slip away without me noticing. But I noticed. I woke up just before the sunrise, and although it was dark, I knew that he was gone. I woke my parents up, and we searched the house. Maybe he was hiding, maybe he had gone down to the basement.

Maybe he had fallen down somewhere, and needed--

“Jingcha, you need to calm down. We’ll find Jin, I promise."

My mother always told me to breathe deeper, to not let my feelings boil to the surface. My father told me that my earthbending was a safe place to invest my emotions, that earth could accept any feeling I could muster. And he was right. For a while, earth yielded to anger; sands shifted with my pride, bricks broke under bluster. For a while, the earth beneath me could rise at my command, even in small ways, safe for the schoolyard.

My heartbeat was steady; my breath, slow. I was stronger than anyone would give me credit for, but I got credit enough to know I was a good bender: good enough to compete with kids older than me, kids heavier than me. I was good enough that the stakes started getting higher before I had any way of saying I wasn’t ready. Kids would bully Jin, and I would lay them out, without trouble. But then, the kids who would come for me got bigger. Big brothers, teenagers, tall boys, stocky boys on their way to becoming the men they thought they should be: defenders, not of the weak, but of the would-be strong.

They were the ones I was keeping humble, and telling them, with emphatic fists of earth, no. Absolutely not.

You do not have the right. And they did not have the right to harm others.

When we found Jin, he was at the park we used to play in together. Jin didn’t like to put his hands in the sand, but we would build sand castles together and I would always help him give them shape and form, like my father had taught me to do. I would ask him,

“What do you want it to look like?”

I would give form to his dreams, and then they would be our reality.

I asked him what was wrong, why he had run away. He had difficulty putting his feelings into words. He was getting better, but the feeling would always choke him on its way out. What he told me was:

“I had a dream that we were here. I had… I dreamed that there wasn’t any more sand. I dreamed we couldn’t make castles anymore. I was scared that we couldn’t play together anymore.”

Jin had difficulty looking people in the eyes when he talked, and he wasn’t looking at me when he said this. But then, he looked me in the eye and said,

“Jingcha, I don’t want to lose… us playing together in the sand.”

Then, I was the one having trouble putting things into words. I wasn’t Jin’s big sister, I was his twin sister. Even back then, I felt like I had to grow up faster, for him.  
I had to protect him, and comfort him, and make sure he knew that I was there for him. I didn’t know what to say. In the moment, I felt like anything I could say would make him cry. It would have made me cry, too.

“You won’t lose me,” I said. But over time, Jin did lose us, playing together. He lost me shaping his dreams into castles of sand. He lost me, holding his hand. He lost--

I lost--

“Jingcha, hey. Are you holding up alright?”

The wind whipping around us didn’t bother me--Jampa was a talented airbender, so even when she was flying at breakneck speeds, she could keep herself and any rescued passengers in her care from being subject to the air pressure around them. I realized for the first time that I was crying, that I had been crying, thinking about Jin.

“I’m fine. Do you know where the Water Tribe neighborhoods are? Jin’s with Iluq, I know it.”

“Oh, that sweet boy? Water Tribe neighborhoods… I know a few, which is his?”

I had never seen the city from the sky like Jampa, no doubt, saw every day. I didn’t know what Iluq’s neighborhood was called, or what it would look like from above. I had been there once before, years ago. Iluq was kind, I could give him that. We never really got along. He was important to Jin, so I was fine with him being around, but there was something about the way he looked at me, at both of us that made me uneasy.

I remember there was a great fountain near Iluq’s house. Waterbenders would go there and do street shows. Iluq’s mom said the police used to tell people not to use the fountain’s water for bending shows, but the city council approved the safe use of fountain water for entertainment purposes, as long as whatever water was used could be returned to the fountain and properly purified. It was always interesting to me that the police, which was mostly made up of metalbenders, thought they had the right to say what waterbenders could and couldn’t do with their own water. Waterbenders were rare in the United Republic, but they always showed up when people were having problems with the police, whether it was a street water-artist or a firebender turf conflict.

They were peacekeepers, artists and politicians.

“I know there’s a fountain nearby. Look for a fountain.”

“Got it.”

~*~

As we glide through the air, I get the sense that we’re getting close. The skyline may be unfamiliar to me, but from above I see the skyscrapers I remember from when we walked the streets together, years ago. Iluq’s house was embedded in a dense neighborhood of waterbender homes. From above I can see that the streets of this part of the city stretched out from the great fountain at its center like tentacles, like curved rays of the sun. I have no way of knowing which ray contained Iluq’s house, but I keep my gaze along any street where I can see people. I almost ask Jampa to turn around when suddenly, I see a glittering column of white erupt from the middle of an intersection.

“Jampa, look, there! In the water!”

I can just make out the faint image of two bodies--two small bodies--suspended in the air, surrounded by glittering droplets. One of them begins to swirl in a circle, surrounding them in a layer of white--of snow, and our rescue window opens for only a short time. “I see them,” Jampa says. “Hang tight.”

With an agile somersault, Jampa’s velocity becomes jet-like; we slice a diagonal toward the street the bodies are falling toward. The wind rushing against us, I close my eyes. I can’t watch, I’m afraid of falling, of seeing them fall to their--

“Gotcha!”

A dense ring of wind had cushioned their fall, slowing them almost completely to a stop before dropping them on the ground below. Jin was safe. Jin and…

“Iluq?” I unstrap myself from Jampa’s harness and step on solid ground. My legs feel numb, I can barely feel the earth or take solid steps. I approach Jin and Iluq and Iluq groans, bringing himself to his feet.

“Hey Jingcha,” he manages to say, through coughs. “Glad you could make it.”

“Iluq, honey, what were you and Jin doing in the air like that? You really could have been hurt. Or worse,”

“I had no choice. Jin’s Avatar spirit sucked us into the underground. I had one shot,” he chokes on his words, on his last memory. “I had to shoot us up through the manhole.”

“Thank goodness we made it to save you in time,” Jampa sounds oddly shaken. More than she was when she saved me.

“Jin ran away from the White Lotus,” I said. “Did he tell you why?”

“He was clearly scared. Frankly, I don’t blame him for running.”

Iluq always took Jin’s side. In this instance, I don’t blame him, either. But I was scared to death. The thought of losing Jin for good terrified me in a way that made me angry. Even when Iluq seemed sympathetic to how I felt, his blue eyes always seemed to say, “I pity you.”

“We need to get him back to the Lotus,” I say, striding toward Jin’s unconscious body.

“Jingcha, wait, don’t--”

“Don’t touch him? He’s my brother, don’t think I don’t know that,”

“Wait! That’s not,”

Light. The same light that filled my house when Jin blew a hole through the roof, except this time it’s emanating from my brother’s body, erupting from his eyes.

A funnel of wind, beginning at his feet and expanding outward, pushes me back--pushes all of us back. This power… it’s--

“His Avatar spirit is trying to protect him!” Iluq shouts, over the whipping winds. “Jampa, can you,”

Without hesitating, Jampa protects us with a shield of air, and not a moment too soon. The funnel gives way to whipping tendrils, which begin pounding against our barrier as if with anger. Everything is happening so fast, and at first I’m not sure what I can do. I move to summon hunks of earth from the road, but Iluq stops me with his hand.

“Jingcha, you can’t earthbend against Jin, he won’t be able to protect himself from you. We need to wait out the storm.”

“He’s having an Avatar tantrum,” I say, because that’s what this is. “Maybe he just needs some tough love,”

“No! I don’t think you understand--”

That pushes me over the edge. I grab Iluq’s arm and, pulling him toward me, I stare hard into his face. “You can’t tell me you know Jin better than me! You can’t know how hard it’s been, how long I’ve had to protect him, and be there--You just can’t!” The ground beneath us cracks open, and dust whips around us. Jampa expands the air shield, but it’s getting cloudier by the second. I send a downward launching kick into the earth at our feet and attempt to send Jin flying. Jampa can catch him before he falls, and he’ll be safe, he--

“Jingcha! What do you think you’re doing?!”

With the wind no longer whipping around us, Iluq’s voice comes through loud and clear. Jin dodged my pillar and is tearing through the air, screaming fire at everything in his path and I--I see Iluq grasping for his canteen and a moment later, I am deluged with water, pinned to the wall. “You let your emotions get the best of you, and you almost got us all killed! This is not the time to be selfish!”

Being frozen to a wall is disorienting, so I quickly scan my surroundings and find Jampa has already left to follow after Jin. It’s just me and Iluq. I look at those blue eyes, and I don’t see pity. I don’t even see the usual condescension. I see rage. He wears it differently than the boys I’m used to fighting. Somehow, it is more chilling, though the ice probably helps him on that front.

“Don’t you dare... tell me I’m selfish,” I manage to choke out, through the cold wrapping my torso, pressing against my lungs. Iluq calms his rage-filled stare and pulls the air in front of himself. The ice trapping me against the wall turns to cool water, which he circles around his body and guides toward his canteen.

“Jingcha, I’m sorry that you’re upset. I don’t know how the news made you feel, but… we have to be strong for Jin right now. If the police get to him before Jampa, before we can,” he was absolutely right. I’m stomping mad, but I’m even more afraid for Jin’s life.

“We have to catch up to him,” I say, shaking off the icicles that had formed around my shoes. “Let’s go.”

I bolt past Iluq in the direction I last saw Jin fly toward, and find Iluq is quickly able to catch up to me. A thin sheet of frost coats the road and he’s skating it like we’re at the Polar Rink. I knew he wore those boots for a reason, but this is the first time I’ve seen him use them on a city street.

“Which way?” I ask, trying not to sound frantic. Iluq takes a moment to scan our surroundings.

“Hang a right!” he shouts.

“What?”

“Turn right!”

I slide into a turn and erect a quick curved corner in the road to maintain my momentum. Iluq kicks off the ground and pirouettes into a landing on the other side of the street. I’ll give it to him, he’s light on his feet, for a waterbender. He seems unfazed by his near spill, as if he was ready for it in advance, no--as if he wanted some excuse to jump.

“You’re not a bad skater,” I say.

“Heh, I’m glad even you can see that,” he says.

I whisper something that’d get me slapped under my breath.

The streets aren’t crowded with cars, but there are a decent amount of people walking around on foot. Waterbenders, mostly, and from the fearful looks of them, many of them have seen Jin already.

“Where do you think he’s going?”

“He’s scared,” Iluq says. “I imagine he’d go somewhere safe, somewhere there aren’t too many people.”

“Not a lot of those places left,” I say. “If he’s scared, Jin would run anywhere. We need to catch up with Jampa. Wherever she is, the police will be too. As long as we can protect him from the metalbenders,"

“He’ll be okay. We’ll protect him. He just needs a softer touch.”

I’m not sure if he was saying that for my sake or his, but the reassuring smile on his face was annoyingly effective. I can tell why Jin--why he and Jin get along. Jin needs me, but he needs someone like Iluq, too. Someone who won’t give up on him, someone who won’t turn tail and run when things get tough.

Another corner, and a few more blocks and our running brings us back to the fountain Jampa and I used as a landmark. When we get there, the situation is worse than I feared. A squadron of metalbender police officers have the fountain surrounded, forming a wide blockade around the square. Jampa is circling the fountain, and other airbender cops are joining her, trying to pacify Jin, contain him in a stronger air bubble than the one he is creating. Every time they get a handle on him, he slips away and slices the air with an arc of flame. Even from this distance, I can hear Jin’s voice. He’s not running, but he’s scared.

No--he’s furious. I see his glowing eyes, hear his pain-twisted scream. He looks--

“Get out of here, kid. It’s not safe.”

“It’s not safe for him with you around. If you use your metal, you’ll kill him.”

The officer is easy to push past. I can hear Iluq shouting for me to wait, but I ignore him. I look up at the glowing boy, the public threat; he looks like my twin brother, and he looks, at this angle, just like me. I hear the swift-shifting, air-cutting sound of police-issue metal restraints being released in my direction. They think I’m just a bratty kid. They must think I haven’t felt the sharp purity of metal in my grip. They’re wrong.

“He’s mine.”

I whip my arms behind me and flatten them as if against a wall. To stop incoming metal, you must have a body as firm as stone and a mind like titanium. It might not work against the chief, but to these low ranking footmen, it’s more than enough to slow them down. While they are keeping themselves busy keeping their metal from recoiling and whipping them in the face, I’m stomping myself into the air like a rocket. I can’t aim straight for Jin--the contact would kill one or both of us--so I bring a head-sized boulder up with me for later. Jampa and the other airbenders see me as I dismount.

“Jampa, slingshot me!” I shout, and as I shoot past Jin, Jampa intercepts.

“You’re crazy, cuz, but I see you,” she says, preparing to throw me right back at Jin. “I’ll soften your fall, just--go get em’!”

It all happens the way I thought it would as I launched into the air. I am sent flying, even faster than I launched myself, back toward Jin. My brother is distracted, trying to spit flames at the airbenders. However this exposes him to the elements; namely, earth. I take my hand-boulder and split it into two. The first I plan to turn to mud so I can take Jin’s hand safely and pull him down with me, and the other--

“I’ve got you, Jin Hua.” We connect, and I stick us together. I bend the mud back into earth, and we hurtle toward the ground. Before we reach it, the airbenders create a cushion like Jampa did earlier, but I still connect with the tiling of the fountain square. It’s nothing I can’t take, but I won’t lie and say the wind isn’t knocked out of me. “I’ve got you.”

The glow coming from Jin goes away, and then my own light begins to fade.

~*~

When I come to, I’m in my bed, it’s night and I--I want to burst free of my covers, but it feels like I’ve been tucked in too tightly. Really my muscles are so roughed up and scraped that it hurts to move. A slant of light from outside my room lets me know we have company at home, and a faint, but distinguishable voice lets me know one part of that company is Jampa. I’m afraid that the police have taken Jin into custody, that they’re trying to protect the public from him. It takes me a moment of panicked scanning to realize that Jin is in the room with me. He’s still unconscious, which is a relief. I’m not paralyzed but there’s no way I can get out of my bed to see him.

A sequence of short breaths, and I’m crying. I’m crying in a way I’ve never cried before. I’m crying because I want someone to find me, I’m crying because I never got my answer from Dad. Even today, I was still the one who had to save him. I was the one who had to protect him from the police, from himself. But… I knew I couldn’t have done it alone. I was too angry, too firm. I had to be like Jampa; strong enough to get close, but soft enough to keep him from getting hurt. I just wish there was someone like that… for me.

“Jingcha? Are you okay?” I don’t know who would have been worse to hear on the other side of the door, my mother or--

“Iluq, yeah. I’m fine.” My catching breaths didn’t help hide my pain. “You good?”

Iluq, now stepping into our room like a child dipping his toe in the turtleduck pond, seems unharmed. Unharmed, but relieved.

“Well, yeah,” he says. “I didn’t play hero. That was you. And you saved Jin’s life.”

“I did the only thing I could,” I say, unable to avoid wincing. “He needed me.”

“It was stupid, maybe a little bit crazy, but,” he approaches my bed. “It was also crazy stupid awesome. You saved my best friend, the Avatar. I can’t thank you enough, Jingcha.”

I want to shrug this off. I want to roll my eyes and not let this compliment sink in. But that’s only because it’s coming from him. If anyone else had been thanking me, I think I could have managed a smile, a nod, a bow. I manage to free a hand from under the covers, and find it covered in dirt, small grains of sand.

“I should be thanking you,” I say.

Iluq is shocked to hear this. I wonder if a similar line of thinking is running through his head, that a thank you from me is hard to take. But I’m wrong. His smile is definite, and his eyes give the full feeling away.

“You mean that?” he says. Practically crying. Gross.

“You helped me calm down when I was furious. You told me something that I needed to hear.” I don’t let him interrupt. “You let me know that I wasn’t the only one who cared. I wasn’t the only one who knew what Jin needed.”

Jin needed a softer touch, and Jin needed a friend. As Jin and I got further apart, I had to get harder, but I never needed to get harder on him. If anything, I had to be his armor. Soft on the inside, but hard in the face of anything that would seek to do him harm. If I ever needed back up, I know Iluq could rise to the challenge. Light on his feet or not, I know he would never let anyone hurt Jin.

Iluq takes my hand in his and is unafraid of the dirt on my fingers. With the last of my strength, I shake his hand firmly, and drift swiftly off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Any feedback is greatly appreciated! I've been a part of the Avatar fandom since the very beginning and while this is certainly non-canon, I have done my best to do my research. If characters resonate with you, or if any plot elements seem unlikely given what you know about Avatar lore, please mention it! I have a rough outline, but I am open to shifts in course if I deem it necessary.


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